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Nominations for 2017 were mild compared to the rudefest that was 2015, but there are exceptions: pussyhat (‘pink knitted hat worn by demonstrators at the Women’s March’) was shortlisted for word of the year; askhole (‘person who continuously asks ridiculous or obnoxious questions’) was in the running for most creative; and, most notably, shitpost was declared the digital word of the year.
So what the shit, you might wonder, is shitpost?
Much as shitpaper means toilet paper but shit paper means, for example, the Daily Mail,* the closed-up spelling of shitpost indicates that it is not just a bad post or the act of posting shittily. There’s something else going on.
Shitposting is a kind of deliberately bad trolling. The ADS glosses it as: ‘posting of worthless or irrelevant online content intended to derail a conversation or to provoke others’. It achieves these aims typically through distraction, misdirection, nuisance, and casual offensiveness. Know Your Meme says shitposting describes:
a range of user misbehaviors and rhetoric on forums and message boards that are intended to derail a conversation off-topic, including thread jacking, circlejerking and non-commercial spamming.
The Daily Dot says it encompasses:
content of aggressively, ironically, and trollishly poor quality. Incoherent jokes, hasty Photoshopping, mashups, irrelevance, errors in spelling or grammar – all are hallmarks of the shitpost.
So what the shit, you might wonder, is shitpost?
Much as shitpaper means toilet paper but shit paper means, for example, the Daily Mail,* the closed-up spelling of shitpost indicates that it is not just a bad post or the act of posting shittily. There’s something else going on.
Shitposting is a kind of deliberately bad trolling. The ADS glosses it as: ‘posting of worthless or irrelevant online content intended to derail a conversation or to provoke others’. It achieves these aims typically through distraction, misdirection, nuisance, and casual offensiveness. Know Your Meme says shitposting describes:
a range of user misbehaviors and rhetoric on forums and message boards that are intended to derail a conversation off-topic, including thread jacking, circlejerking and non-commercial spamming.
The Daily Dot says it encompasses:
content of aggressively, ironically, and trollishly poor quality. Incoherent jokes, hasty Photoshopping, mashups, irrelevance, errors in spelling or grammar – all are hallmarks of the shitpost.
